Richard Hamm/Staff

Former Jefferson, UGA player Wehunt takes over as Oconee County's basketball coach

By Cody Pacesports@onlineathens.com – published Monday, November 25, 2013

Coaching was always a part of the plan for Richard Wehunt, but an unpredictable career in basketball altered the course that brought him there.

Wehunt, now a first-year head basketball coach at Oconee County, was a high-school standout at Jefferson. His senior year in 1998, Wehunt averaged 39 points per game, was the state’s leading scorer and was named the Northeast Georgia Player of the Year.

“I was about an inch shorter and probably weighted 160 pounds soaking wet,” Wehunt said. “For no reason whatsoever, the summer after I graduated I just gained 25 pounds, so obviously if I had been that size coming out of high school … I probably would have ended up with better offers.”

Wehunt’s best offers came from Georgia Tech and Georgia State. Wehunt, a lifelong Georgia Tech fan growing up, considered the offer from the Yellow Jackets “an insult” because the team wanted him to redshirt his freshman year.

Ultimately, he ended up at North Georgia where he excelled. His summer growth and play at North Georgia left Wehunt wanting more.

“I went to North Georgia and played for two years, had a really good sophomore year,” Wehunt said. “I think I was second in the nation in scoring and then just kind of got the itch to go do something bigger.”

As a result, Wehunt crossed enemy lines and ditched the black and gold to don the red and black for Georgia.

Wehunt’s deal with Georgia was not a full scholarship immediately. He came as a preferred walk-on with a partial scholarship, although he earned a scholarship before his senior season.

However, Wehunt’s senior season was overshadowed by controversy involving former Georgia head coach Jim Harrick and his son, Jim Harrick Jr. After evidence of academic fraud was found within the program, the university imposed sanctions on itself that involved pulling the team from the Southeastern Conference tournament and ruling it ineligible for the NCAA tournament.

Although Wehunt is “still bitter” about how the scandal was handled, he takes the “everything happens for a reason approach” and said he might not be where he is today if it weren’t for how his career concluded.

“I know it’s very cliché to say that but honestly, I think about how my wife and I met and I think about the two wonderful children we have right now that maybe all of that, maybe we never even meet,” Wehunt said. “At the time I was all about pursuing a career in college coaching and maybe if things work out a little differently, I end up not going to grad school and I go off and I start pursuing that collegiate coaching career.”

However, Wehunt didn’t pursue collegiate coaching and instead became an elementary school teacher for one year before former Oconee County head coach Michael Youngblood called.

“I was good friends with (Youngblood),” Wehunt said. “Especially where I was at in my life, just gotten married, my wife got pregnant soon after that, I wasn’t ready for any head coaching responsibility, so I came over here and had been the assistant coach for the last four years.”

After a 6-20 campaign for Oconee County during the 2012-13 season, Wehunt was asked to step into the head coaching role for this season.

“Coach Wehunt is positive, he’s excited. We’ve got really enthusiastic practices, it’s great to be around,” first-year assistant Tom Dimitroff said. “The program’s kind of been down a little bit the last few years and he’s brought a good energy that we’re pretty excited about and the kids are seeming to respond pretty well.”

Although Wehunt’s only prior experience with Oconee County was a “pretty heated” summer-league game while at Jefferson, he’s been able to draw on his basketball career to help develop his young Warriors team.

“What we’re trying to do is we’re trying to get a lot of freedom of movement but it takes a while because I’m not trying to tell them where to be at all times,” Wehunt said. “If it starts to look like my vision, we’ll be playing at a much faster tempo, pushing the ball, getting some points in transition a lot like what we did at Jefferson and wen I played at Georgia.”

On a light practice day sandwiched between a Tuesday night and a Friday night game last week, Wehunt called his players into a huddle. As he spoke, players listened, a level of credibility established in part thanks to his level of experience.

“He holds records at Jefferson in scoring and if you watch Coach Wehunt’s games from when he was in high school, he wasn’t just an offensive player,” said junior James Howell, a transfer from Athens Christian who is in his first season with the program. “He was more of just a leader than just an all-time scorer and then playing at a D-I school he has that experience of playing against really good athletes.”

That experience translates to more than on-court credibility. Understanding the importance of a good coach from his own playing days and his maintained relationship with Harrick Sr., Wehunt plays a role to his players beyond coaching.

“He jokes around with us and he’s more, he tries to be our friend and really get to know us as people,” Howell said. “It’s good to be able to bond with your coach because like in the high school level at the age we are now, we’re in that stage where we kind of want to do our own thing … we don’t respond well to people being really strict with us and to have coach come in and try to bond with us and try to get to know us more than just to give us how it is, give us demands and tell us to do stuff, I think it just gets us to work better as a team.”

Wehunt’s charisma makes him natural in that role and a good fit to coach high school. Although he said that he can “never say never” to trying the college ranks one day, he’s happy where his up-and-down career has brought him.

“Right now, my goal is just to make Oconee County basketball as good as it can be,” Wehunt said. “I’m very happy here, I like teaching here, I like the community, I like the players I have, I’m very comfortable here and if I were fortunate enough to coach here the next 15, 20 years, I could totally be happy doing that.”